This invention relates to a game played by a remotely controlled figure on a miniature playing field. The invention emulates the real game as played on a real playing field by human players.
Many people who play golf or other sports become handicapped from old age, disease, or accident so that they can no longer go out on a real playing field to play a real game. Yet their handicap need not and often does not diminish their interest in the game. They can derive the same pleasure by playing a model game as they did from the real game. (See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,322,081, col. 1, lines 11-18). This pleasure is heightened in proportion as the model game replicates the real game.
No prior-art replication of the game of golf on a model offers an alternative that is the least bit realistic. The model golfer in previous golf games may be mounted on a cart (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,591,158) or directed by an apparatus larger than the golfer itself (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,239,217). The model golf courses offer little relief, unlike real golf courses, because the model golfers that play on them might have difficulty following a steeply sloping terrain (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,058,313). Indeed, such a game may offer only a planar course with no attempt at realism (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,202,545).